Saturday, 21 July 2012

Essence Evil Queen

My sister actually bought this but the magpie in me pounced upon it when I saw the bottle in her hand. Look at it there, so sparkly:

Part of Essence's Snow White collection, "Evil Queen" is a clear based special effect top coat, loaded with large purple circular glitter. I thought I'd throw on one layer on it's own, just to give you an idea of what the glitter is like:

Pretty but definitely needs to be worn over something, as it just looks a bit wierd on it's own.
Here it is over one of my all time favourite polishes, OPI's Lincoln Park After Dark (the OPI on it's own is first, just to show how the top coat changes it):

It's hard to see so I put a dark background behind it, I think the sparkles show up a bit better this way:

Nice, no? I really liked looking at this on my nails as it is really pretty but I will say application was far from easy, it's one of those polishes you have to use the brush to place the glitter to get a proper distribution, rather than just brush it on as usual. It also took aaaaages to dry, even after I thought it was dry it still smudged and pieces of glitter fell off, which was irritating. Having said that, it is a nice top coat, probably just requires more patience than I have!
On the plus side, while I have no idea how much this cost, being Essence, I would assume it's on the more bargaintastic end of the spending spectrum. Along with the rest of the range there's two other Snow White top coats which I would also be very interested in trying!